<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Rivers and Roads by Oliviet</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24561103">Rivers and Roads</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oliviet/pseuds/Oliviet'>Oliviet</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Amnesia fic, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, We don't know her, just stealing a plot point or 2, mention of canon character trauma, not RT's season 4, pining to remember...mutually, s4 finale but make it the chuck series finale</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 02:41:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,980</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24561103</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oliviet/pseuds/Oliviet</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Veronica gets the call from the hospital that her husband is awake, she fully expects him to greet her with a teasing remark about her choice in timing to go home and shower. What she doesn't expect is to be greeted by the 17-year-old boy who used to push her buttons in all the wrong ways. Roughly based on the Chuck series finale, Veronica has to try and get Logan to fall in love with her again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Logan Echolls/Veronica Mars</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>107</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>307</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The song of the fic (as well as the title) is Rivers and Roads by The Head and the Heart</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Of course she gets the call during the one hour she finally chose to go home and shower. He’d been unconscious, but stable, for nearly two days and she’d been wandering around the hospital with soot still in her hair from the explosion. She’d talked herself into going home, well to her dad’s, for a quick shower and change of clothes. Told herself she’d be back at his side in no time without having missed anything. But just as she lifts her hairbrush to comb through her wet hair, her phone rings.</p>
<p>Logan’s awake.</p>
<p>He’s never going to let her live this down, she’s sure of it. She can already see that damn smirk on his face, hear his teasing voice.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Personal hygiene is more important than sitting vigil at my bedside?”</em>
</p>
<p>Her husband was a smartass. A loveable smartass, but one none-the-less.</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh. Her husband.</em>
</p>
<p>Everything had happened so fast after their wedding two days ago. That’s still brand new and doesn’t feel real. She married Logan. She has a husband. She’s somebody’s wife. <em>Logan’s wife</em>.</p>
<p>That boy she’s known since she was 12 years old, the one who smashed in her headlights and made out with her on a bathroom sink once, <em>he’s</em> her husband. Oh, to know what 12-year-old Veronica would think of this development. Or even 17-year-old Veronica.</p>
<p>She runs the brush through her hair at a rapid pace and runs back out the door to head back to the hospital. She intends to bring the headlights up to him again. And the bathroom sink. She wants to see that amusement dancing in his eyes, listen to him talk his way out of his old destructive habits before suggesting they reenact that make out session in the hospital bathroom.</p>
<p>She can’t wait to roll her eyes at him before inevitably finding a way to lay in that hospital bed with him so she can hear his heartbeat and remind herself that he’s still alive and hers and that everything is going to be okay now.</p>
<p>
  <em>Logan’s awake.</em>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>There’s some combination of doctors and nurses huddled around him when she gets back to his room. Eventually, one of them notices her presence hovering by the doorway and they excuse themselves to give the two of them some privacy while they run some labs on his bloodwork.</p>
<p>Logan slowly turns his head on his pillow to look over at her and she wonders how much pain he’s in right now. But then he <em>laughs </em>when his eyes focus on her. Laughs like her standing there is the funniest joke he’s ever heard. Veronica subconsciously runs a hand through her still damp hair, waiting for him to let her in on the joke.</p>
<p>“You’re the last person on earth I’d expect to be here,” he says once his laughing fit subsides.</p>
<p>Okay, that’s strange. Why wouldn’t she be here? Did he think she died in the blast or something? Was that laughter some type of anti-grief reaction?</p>
<p>“What do you mean by that?” she asks.</p>
<p>“Your guilty conscious finally catch up with you or something? Do you even have a conscious?”</p>
<p>Okay, what? She’s been a little off lately, sure, but what had she done to deserve <em>that</em>?</p>
<p>“Logan, what the hell are you talking about?”</p>
<p>He sighs and the way he does it – it’s reminiscent of a boy she used to know years ago…</p>
<p>“From what I’ve gathered from this situation, I almost died or something and who’s hovering over my bedside? My parents? Obviously not. My half-sister? No way in hell. But super sleuth Veronica Mars is here.”</p>
<p>Oh god. That – no. There’s no way. This can’t be happening. He’s just mad at her about something and her mind is blowing it out of proportion from her lack of sleep.</p>
<p>“Logan,” she says slowly, trying to keep the shakiness out of her tone. “I’m your wife.”</p>
<p>He snorts. “Yeah okay, Ronnie. And I’m the President of the United States.”</p>
<p>She feels her mouth run dry and her heart drop right out of her chest. No, no, no, please no.</p>
<p>“What year is it?” she asks, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose to try and stop the tears from falling.</p>
<p>“You don’t know the answer to that?”</p>
<p>“Logan. Please,” she grits out.</p>
<p>There’s that sigh again. “2004. Now, what did you do to your hair? Have regrets about the chop job and get extensions? I knew there had to be some ounce of ‘09er wannabe left in you.”</p>
<p>She feels like she’s going to be sick and like she can’t breathe at the same time. She wants to hurl, but she’s not getting air into her lungs fast enough. He’s lost 15 years of his life. 15 years of <em>their</em> lives. To him they’re 17, maybe even 16 yet, and he’s still mad at her for standing by her dad with the Kane case. About Lilly. Fuck, he’s still over here grieving Lilly’s death. <em>15 years.</em></p>
<p>Veronica shakes her head. Their entire relationship is just gone to him, non-existent. Their marriage, their home, their dog, all of it. Their fights and makeups never happened. Their first kiss at The Camelot. Their first time at The Grand. Bobcat. Epic. Lives ruined. Bloodshed.</p>
<p>It starts as a hiccupping sob. She tries to cover her mouth with her hands to muffle the noise, but it makes no difference. He’s alive, but she’s lost him. This Logan doesn’t love her. This Logan hates her guts.</p>
<p>“Geez, sorry, your hair looks great,” he mumbles.</p>
<p>She shakes her head again, taking a step toward his bedside and then stepping back again in hesitation.</p>
<p>“It’s not,” she starts, still unable to stop herself from crying. “It’s not 2004, Logan. It’s 2019.”</p>
<p>“You’re shitting me, right? Did Dick put you up to this? Wait, why would you be colluding with Dick that makes even less sense than your hair.”</p>
<p>Veronica wipes at her eyes. “Look at me. Do I look 17 to you? Look at yourself. Did you have those muscles in high school?”</p>
<p>He narrows his eyes at her, taking in her appearance. She can’t look at him. She was not a fan of this Logan. The story about the headlights would not be a grievance for him. He’s the one who did it. He’s the one who thought it was funny.</p>
<p>She hears him mutter “woah” and looks up from her spot on the ground to find him flexing his arm muscles. His arms which she had very much planned to have wrapped around her right now. So much for that.</p>
<p>“Okay so,” he starts slowly. “It’s not 2004. Why do I think it’s 2004?”</p>
<p>“You’ve been unconscious for two days…” she trails off, her fingers starting to fidget with the rings on her left hand. His wedding band is in the back pocket of her jeans. She meant to slip it back onto his finger today. “I should go get a doctor.”</p>
<p>She turns to leave his room.</p>
<p>“Veronica.”</p>
<p>He stops her when she gets to the doorway and she spins back around to look at him, holding onto the doorframe as though she needs it to hold her up.</p>
<p>“Why did you say that you’re my wife?”</p>
<p>She’d laugh if she wasn’t so close to crying again. She holds her left hand up for him to see.</p>
<p>“Because I am.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>It’s rare, but it happens. Sometimes people will get their memories back, sometimes they won’t. The brain is a weird, weird organ, and all of these centuries of neuroscience studies and people still don’t understand it completely.</p>
<p>15 years of his life are gone and the doctors can’t even guarantee that he’ll get those years back. He still feels like he’s 17, but he’s 32? A grown ass married man with a career and a wife and honestly how the hell did he end up married to Veronica Mars? There is quite possibly no one that irritates him more than she does.</p>
<p>But he watches her now, huddled in the corner of the room, trying to stay out of the doctor’s way. She’s on the phone with her dad he thinks, and she keeps wiping at her eyes and pulling her jacket tighter around herself. He sees the glint of the engagement ring he apparently gave her as it catches the sunlight from the window. He hears snippets of her conversation while the doctor in front of him attempts to give him a neurological exam.</p>
<p>“No, Dad, not completely. He just thinks we’re 17. No, before we started dating. I don’t know. I don’t know. They’re not sure. I don’t – that’s not even something I’m thinking about right now. We’ll find a place. We have the money. Dad –”</p>
<p>They’re going to start dating later this year? Wait, no, not <em>this</em> year. But they started dating junior year of high school? How and why did that happen? He knows they were friends once. Knows that in middle school, he had a crush on her. But ever since Lilly died, they’ve wanted nothing to do with each other. He was not her favorite person any more than she was his.</p>
<p>But he keeps watching her and she honest to god looks like she’s ready to hurl. She looks like she’s in so much pain over this. This woman that he realizes he doesn’t actually know is very much in love with him. And he has no idea who she is. The tiny blonde annoyance opened herself up to him somewhere along the way. She became his <em>wife</em>. And he still can’t look at her without thinking about Lilly. He can’t look at her without getting angry about how her family ruined Duncan’s life or about how she insisted on continuing to look into Lilly’s murder when they had the guy who did it already locked up in a jail cell somewhere. Unless…</p>
<p>“Did Abel Koontz kill Lilly?”</p>
<p>She meets his gaze with wide eyes, tells her dad she needs to go, and takes a few tentative steps out of the corner. The doctor tells him someone will come by in a few minutes to take him up for an MRI. Logan nods, but keeps his gaze trained on Veronica.</p>
<p>“Logan, there’s so much that you don’t know,” she says, her gaze dropping to the floor.</p>
<p>“Yeah, that’s sort of the problem. Did Koontz kill Lilly?”</p>
<p>She looks back up at him, sliding her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. He sees the teenager version of her he knows, the <em>only</em> version of her he knows.</p>
<p>“No, he didn’t,” she says, shaking her head.</p>
<p>“So, who did it? Did they ever catch the guy?”</p>
<p>She gives him a small smile and looks up at the ceiling. “I don’t know if this is the best memory for me to start with.”</p>
<p>“Just tell me what happened to her, Veronica.”</p>
<p>“Your dad,” she says softly. “Aaron killed her.”</p>
<p>He feels like he’s just had the wind knocked out of him. No way in hell. His father was an abusive asshole but he wasn’t a murderer. And why would he kill his girlfriend? It didn’t make any sense.</p>
<p>“Bullshit.”</p>
<p>She lets out a heavy sigh, withdrawing her hands from her back pockets and wrapping them around her torso. “They were sleeping together. And he was filming them without her knowledge. But she found the tapes and thought she could use them as blackmail. But he killed her. And it went to trial, but he was acquitted. Only later to be found murdered in his hotel room.”</p>
<p>His head was reeling. His girlfriend was cheating on him with his own father? His father had killed Lilly? His father was dead?</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.</p>
<p>“And my mom?”</p>
<p>The way she closes her eyes and releases another heavy sigh, he knows it isn’t good. <em>Please, don’t let him have killed her too.</em></p>
<p>“Logan, are you sure –”</p>
<p>“Tell me what happened to her.”</p>
<p>Veronica opens her eyes and looks over the top of his head. “She committed suicide in early 2005.”</p>
<p>No, no, no, no. This is not real, none of this is real. She’s lying to him. She’d always been manipulative, hadn’t she?</p>
<p>“Logan, I’m sorry.” She sounds like she’s close to crying again.</p>
<p>“Everyone’s dead,” he says slowly. “Lilly. My parents. Who do I have left?”</p>
<p>“You have me.” Her voice breaks and she wraps her arms around herself tighter.</p>
<p>The orderly comes by to take him for an MRI.</p>
<p>“The thing is, Veronica, I don’t know you. Not like you seem to know me.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>She cries the whole time he’s away getting scans. This was a whole new level of cruel. A bomb meant to kill her spared both of their lives, but still managed to take Logan away from her. If his memories don’t return – even if she can get him to fall in love with her again – would things ever be the same? In his mind, he’s still a kid, a teenager. Mentally, he’s not even <em>legal</em>. Suddenly, she feels like she just became Kendall in this relationship.</p>
<p>But she’d made <em>vows</em>. For better or for worse. In sickness and in health. She <em>married</em> him. Watched the way his face lit up when he was told he could kiss his bride, kiss <em>her</em>. Felt the way he was smiling through the entire round of kisses. Listened as he snuck up behind her at their place while she was packing for their honeymoon getaway and he whispered to her about all of the dirty things he wanted to do to her once they were alone.</p>
<p>She wants her husband back, not the boy he used to be. Not the one who participated in making her life a living hell. She’d long since forgiven him for those actions, but that’s what was fresh in his mind. Not their wedding or the last time they had sex. Not even the first time he’d kissed her. To him, none of that has happened. His parents are still alive, except that she told him that they weren’t. He hasn’t extended that first olive branch and asked for her help looking into his mother’s suicide. She hasn’t held him in that lobby while he cried.</p>
<p>None of it’s real to him. <em>She’s</em> not real to him.</p>
<p>The orderly brings him back in and she tries to swipe at the tears in her eyes and smooth down her hair. It air-dried and she can only imagine the half curly, half straight mess that’s left it in. He likes it like this he’d told her once. Like she just stepped out of the shower to curl into bed with him. Or joined him at the beach while he went surfing, the sun drying the ocean water out of her hair.</p>
<p>This Logan has never seen her natural hair.</p>
<p>Veronica stays curled in a ball in her chair by the window, waiting for him to ask her something else about the life he’s lost. She doesn’t know what to say to him without his guidance. He doesn’t know half the things that she does.</p>
<p>“So, what do I do for a living?” he finally asks after a couple moments of silence have passed.</p>
<p>“You’re in the Navy. You used to be a pilot, but now you’re an intelligence officer.”</p>
<p>“The Navy?” he snorts. “The military? Seriously? God, Veronica do you even know me at all?”</p>
<p>And that hurts. “I <em>do </em>know you. Better than you do at this point.”</p>
<p>“I would never join the military. Why would I do that?”</p>
<p>She closes her eyes telling herself that now is not the time to tell him about his overdose. The truth about Lilly and his parents was enough trauma for one day, wasn’t it?</p>
<p>“Believe what you want, but you’ve got the uniform in our closet to prove it.”</p>
<p><em>Our closet</em>. Would it ever be theirs, jointly, again? She knows their home is already gone. Interior wise, the shattered windows may be the only damage, but the exterior…it wasn’t great. The time it will take to clean all of that up and erase the memory of what she’d seen on that street…no matter how many happy memories are trapped in that place it would be easier to just move. Except those memories don’t live on within him.</p>
<p>He snorts again, tugging on the hospital ID bracelet on his wrist. “How’d we end up sharing a closet anyway?”</p>
<p>
  <em>Our story is epic.</em>
</p>
<p>“We fell in love,” she tells him.</p>
<p>“But we hate each other.”</p>
<p>She shakes her head. “You remember being 17, but do you remember being 15? We were friends, Logan. Friends until this awful thing came and tore us apart. But we found our way back to each other. And we fell in love.”</p>
<p>“This awful thing being my father murdering my girlfriend?”</p>
<p>She ducks her head and nods.</p>
<p>“I’ve been awful to you. How do you just forgive all of that? Especially you, queen of holding grudges?”</p>
<p>“I haven’t been the nicest to you either, Logan. Especially not in some of those earlier years that you’ve lost. We fell in love back then and we used it to hurt each other. We knew each other so well that we knew what would hurt the most if we were trying to. But we grew up. We grew up and we found each other again, and this time we didn’t let go.”</p>
<p>He’s quiet and his silence threatens to break her again. All she wants, all she fucking wants, is to crawl into bed with him and let him hold her. She’d give anything to be back on that stupid orange couch of theirs with her head in his lap, his fingers aimlessly playing with her hair while they binge watched whatever new show they came across. For him to come up behind her in their kitchen and skim his fingers up her sides while she was trying to cook. For him to smirk at her because he was right about some dumb argument they were having.</p>
<p>Anything but this silence.</p>
<p>“I just don’t believe it,” he says staring out toward the hallway, like he’s expecting someone else to walk in. “You and I don’t make sense.”</p>
<p>“We make a lot of sense actually. You just don’t remember why.”</p>
<p>They found each other because they were both broken. That’s how they used to joke about it. They were trying to fix themselves by fixing each other. But in truth, she got over her trust issues because of him and he found someone to love him and be his home.</p>
<p>“Look, I – I can tell that I’m hurting you. And I may not remember that I’m supposed to love you, but I don’t want that – to hurt you. Maybe you could get someone like Duncan or Dick to come talk to me. I need to hear it from someone else. Someone who isn’t you, I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>She wipes at her eyes again, the proverbial knife in her gut twisting even harder. “Duncan, uh, that’s another long story, but he’s in Australia now. I think. But Dick, I can call him for you. Maybe he can help.”</p>
<p>She’s always been the one to comfort him. When his mom died. When his dad was accused of killing Lilly and the PCHers jumped him on the bridge. When he found out he had a half-brother and was conned into believing some random guy was him. When he wakes up at 2 AM from nightmares. When he has to go to a funeral for one of his Navy friends. She’s become his rock, his solid ground. And now he’s pushing her away.</p>
<p>“Thanks Ronnie,” he says when she starts digging around in her purse for her phone.</p>
<p>“You don’t call me that,” she says with her back to him, her knuckles turning white with how hard she’s gripping her phone. “Dick still calls me that, but you – you don’t. You stopped once I told you how much I hate it.”</p>
<p>“So, then what do I call you?”</p>
<p>
  <em>Bobcat.</em>
  
</p>
<p>“My name,” she says shakily, turning around as she looks up Dick’s number.</p>
<p>Dick answers on the fifth ring and he sounds hungover. She’d told him Logan was in hospital not long after it had happened. Was this his way of coping or was he just up to his usual shenanigans?</p>
<p>“Logan’s awake,” she tells him. “He’s asking for you.”</p>
<p>“He’s already sick of the old ball and chain, huh?” Dick laughs. “I told him that marriage was never the solution.”</p>
<p>Veronica groans. She absolutely does not have the patience for this right now. “No, Dick. He’s asking for you because he doesn’t remember me.”</p>
<p>Silence. “What do you mean he doesn’t remember you?”</p>
<p>“Just get your ass to the hospital.”</p>
<p>She hangs up on him and lifts her gaze to meet Logan’s.</p>
<p>“I guess not everything changes, huh?” he asks, fidgeting with his hospital bracelet again.</p>
<p>“I’m heading back to my dad’s place for a bit. You won’t but let me know if you need me.”</p>
<p>“Is – this is going to come out wrong, but is it really that hard to be in our place without me?”</p>
<p>She shakes her head, rubbing at her temples as she feels a migraine start to pulsate through her skull. “No, but our place sort of took a hit from the bomb that caused your head injury.”</p>
<p>“Right. Why was there a bomb again?”</p>
<p>She leans heavily against the doorframe of his room. Her guilt was bound to wreck her eventually. “Because I never know when I’m in over my head.”</p>
<p>And then she turns to leave before she starts crying in front of him again. This Logan hasn’t earned the right to see her this vulnerable.</p>
<hr/>
<p>It’s a relief to see Dick walk into his room, dressing almost identical to how he remembers him from high school. Or maybe it’s a bad thing? He’s not really sure of anything at this point.</p>
<p>“Dude, what’s going on?” Dick asks him. “You forgot Ronnie? How do you do that?”</p>
<p>He winces at the use of that name. And then he questions why he hates it.</p>
<p>
  <em>She hates being called that, she just told you that.</em>
  
</p>
<p>Yeah, but why does he care?</p>
<p>
  <em>She’s your wife.</em>
</p>
<p>“I woke up thinking it was 2004 and I have been informed that it is in fact 2019,” Logan explains.</p>
<p>“2004? What was that, sophomore, junior year of high school? You knew her back then. You weren’t friendly, but you knew her.”</p>
<p>“That’s the problem, Dick. The way I remember her, I was vandalizing her car and she was planting bongs in my locker. Now it’s 15 years later and she and I are <em>married</em>?”</p>
<p>His friend softens his demeanor then and he doesn’t think he’s ever seen him like this. He looks almost…sentimental.</p>
<p>“Yeah, you married her. Thanks for the non-invite to your private ceremony by the way, it’s not like I wouldn’t have made an excellent best man or anything, but whatever I’m not butt hurt about it.”</p>
<p>Maybe sentimental was the wrong word. “Okay focus. I fell in love with her?”</p>
<p>Dick whistles. “Dude, she’s had you whipped since high school. She must be a freak in the sheets. Every time the two of you broke up you went into a full-on depression spiral.”</p>
<p>“How many times did we break up?”</p>
<p>“I stopped counting.”</p>
<p>Well that’s promising. Building a marriage off of an ‘on again off again’ relationship.</p>
<p>“Okay, but…we’re married?”</p>
<p>He softens again, rubbing at the back of his head. “Look, you two have had your ups and downs over the years, but ask anyone and they’ll tell you how inseparable you guys are. You’d do anything for each other, man. I’ve never seen two people so disgustingly in love. She gave up some big high-powered attorney job in New York for you. She came back to Neptune to be with you even though you’re overseas a lot for work.”</p>
<p>“I’m seriously in the Navy?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Dick laughs. “I didn’t understand it at first either, but it really suits you. And I see her around town from time to time when you’re gone, and I always think that she looks so lonely. That girl is crazy about you. Maybe consider a career change when you get back on your feet again. She won’t admit it, but she needs you.”</p>
<p>He still doesn’t know how, but if even Dick is saying it, it must be true. He fell in love with Veronica Mars.</p>
<p>“You replaced me, dude,” Dick keeps talking. “I’m not your best friend anymore, she is. And I guess I can’t entirely blame you, she gives you sex after all. And if my memory from college serves right, she’s loud. A freak in the sheets, I’m telling you.”</p>
<p>He remembers being 15 and watching Duncan kiss her. He remembers wondering what that felt like, the press of her lips, the slide of her tongue. He remembers watching her smile at him, wondering why Lilly never looked at him that way.</p>
<p>“What am I supposed to do?” Logan asks. “I’ve lost the last 15 years of my life. I’m in my 30s and have no recollection of my 20s. I’m supposed to be in love with someone I feel like I barely know.”</p>
<p>“So, get to know her again.”</p>
<p>“What, you want me to start dating my wife?”</p>
<p>Dick shrugs. “2005 you started doing it. Sneaking around trying to hide it until your dad threw you a surprise party and he flipped on the lights and there you were making out with her in the doorway. He outed you real quick.”</p>
<p>“My dad threw me a surprise party?” he asks, narrowing his eyes in disbelief.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I think he forgot your birthday or something, so he was trying to make it up to you. My point is, I tried to give you shit for your choice in girlfriend, and you got super defensive and told me to leave. You saw something in her all of those years ago, now you just have to find it again.”</p>
<p>Dick Casablancas the voice of reason in 2019. What a strange time period he woke up in.</p>
<p>“All right, my friend with all of the answers, where do I start?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Oh. My. Gosh. You. Guys. I am seriously blown away by your response to this. Thank you so much for your kind words and for trusting me with this. I had legit tears in my eyes (of joy!) reading people quote back passages from this to me in the reviews and reading about your roller coaster of emotions. I am so, so happy this little one shot idea I had that turned into a three-chapter fic is something that caught your interest. I hope I can continue to do justice for this idea for all of you.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She hasn’t heard from him for a couple of days. She’s been trying to give him his space even if it’s slowly killing her. She tries telling herself it’s just like he’s overseas for work, but she can’t trick her brain into believing that. She spent 48 hours worried that he was going to die. He didn’t die, but now he doesn’t love her and somehow that manages to hurt worse.</p>
<p>But she gets a call from him the day he’s discharged from the hospital, asking her to come and collect him.</p>
<p>“They told me to go home. And you said my home is with you.”</p>
<p>She knows her Logan is still in there somewhere. He’s the one who always called her his home after all.</p>
<p>
  <em>We don’t have to live in Neptune, you know. Home is wherever I’m with you.</em>
</p>
<p>He seems different today. Older. Like his brain has been healing and playing catch up and he might actually be a man in his early thirties again. But he’s still missing time. He still doesn’t remember loving her.</p>
<p>“So, uh,” she starts, pulling away from her parking spot at the hospital. She’s driving his car seeing as how hers exploded. He’s not fazed by it either way. “Where did you want to go? Are you hungry? Or do you just want to go to my dad’s place?”</p>
<p>“I want to see it,” he answers, his gaze focused outside the window.</p>
<p>“See what?”</p>
<p>“Our place. What’s left of our home after…”</p>
<p>She supposes they need to go there anyway. She didn’t pack any of his stuff and right now he’s wearing clothes with the Neptune Memorial Hospital logo on them. She still needs to go through their place and pack up the things that are salvageable. Truth be told they didn’t lose many physical items in the explosion: her car, the windows on the condo, their mailbox, maybe a couple of items in their living room where the blast hit harder. The most valuable thing lost was 15 years of his time. It makes her think the explosion was bigger than it actually was, taking out their whole home since it took out the one thing that was most important to her in it. One hurdle at a time here. But maybe it will kick start his memory, get him to remember at least a little part of her. So, she heads in the direction of home, wondering what, if anything, will come back to him.</p>
<p>There are still scorch marks on the pavement outside of their place and debris still litters their yard. A shiver runs through her at the sight, her memory assaulting with her the image of Logan laying seemingly lifeless on the ground next to the inferno that was formerly her car. The sound of her screaming his name until her throat went raw and the paramedics showed up echoes in her head. The numbness she had previously felt replaced by empty loneliness.</p>
<p>She just wants him to hold her that’s all she wants.</p>
<p>“Who’d you piss off?” Logan whistles, taking in the sight of things.</p>
<p>So much he doesn’t know. So very much.</p>
<p>“Someone who thought he was smarter than I was. I guess in the end, he was right. I didn’t figure out his last clue until it was too late. I rushed to the window to stop you and –”</p>
<p>She can’t finish it. She’s tortured herself with that mental image too many times over the last week and a half. Logan is somewhat limping along behind her as she walks up to the front of their place.</p>
<p>“Are you sure about this?” she asks, biting her lower lip and wondering if he’d accept her help if she offered it. “You’re still in pain, you should be resting.”</p>
<p>He leans against the remnants of what was once their mailbox. “If we’re married – since we’re married – I assume you know about Aaron and the abuse. I have a high pain tolerance.”</p>
<p>“I know you do,” she tells him with an exasperated sigh. “But this isn’t like that. He never tried to blow you up.” She unlocks the door, wondering why she bothered locking it in the first place when all of the windows are missing. “And I’m the one he tried to set on fire.”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>He’s standing up straight now, staring at her in shocked horror. Right. Another story he doesn’t remember.</p>
<p>“I found the tapes Lilly took from him of the two of them. He found out. And proceeded to lock me in an empty chest freezer he set on fire. My dad saved me, it’s fine.”</p>
<p>“Jesus. It’s fine?”</p>
<p>“Oh Logan, honey, that’s actually not the worst thing that’s happened to me.”</p>
<p>He continues to stare at her in disbelief. She really wishes he’d just remember so she didn’t have to continue to spell their traumatic teen years out to him. She’s really not looking forward to reliving all of them again.</p>
<p>He starts to make his way toward her but stops when he gets to the front porch step. He’s no doubt trying to figure out if the leg his doctor <em>explicitly told him to keep pressure off of </em>can hold his weight. He may not remember being a military man, but he sure is acting like that old part of himself. Burnt his hand taking something out of the oven once and finished cooking the entire meal with an icepack duct taped to his hand. He’s infuriating.</p>
<p>Veronica rolls her eyes at his never-ending stubbornness and walks back over to him, slipping his arm around her shoulders so he can use her for support. Her heart sings at being this close to him, the closest thing she’s going to get to hugging him at this point. Logan lets her lead him inside and down onto their couch. There’s glass and debris scattered everywhere and she has to maneuver them around it. She really doesn’t want to stay here any longer than they have to.</p>
<p>“Wait here. I’ll go pack you a bag.”</p>
<p>“How do you know what I want?” he counters, already pouting at being benched.</p>
<p>“We’ve lived together for a while now, Logan. I know how to pack a bag for you.”</p>
<p>“Yeah well, um, just be sure to pack my favorite shirt.”</p>
<p>Her lips curl up into a smile. <em>As if he actually remembers which shirt that is. </em>“It’s already at my dad’s place. I’ve been sleeping in it.”</p>
<p>She watches his face as he registers what she’s just said. It’s cute. He’s cute.</p>
<p>“Is that something you do a lot?” he asks. “Wear my clothes?”</p>
<p>“When you’re gone for work, I do. Back when you were a pilot, they’d send you on these six-month deployments. It was hard, you know? Your shirts only smelled like you for so long until they just started smelling like me.”</p>
<p>“Do I miss you that much when I’m gone?”</p>
<p>She laughs, but it makes her want to cry. “The last time you had a really long deployment you took a bottle of my shampoo with you.”</p>
<p>“Is that what always smells like marshmallows?”</p>
<p>Another laugh but her eyes are watering now. “Apparently yeah.”</p>
<p>“You’ve kept the same brand of shampoo for this long?”</p>
<p>“I like it,” she shrugs. “And so do you.”</p>
<p>She’s going to start crying for real if he keeps asking her questions like this. He’s <em>trying</em>. Trying to see what they meant to each other before he forgot it all. He wants to remember. Or at least figure out if it’s something worth remembering.</p>
<p>“I’ll be back,” she says excusing herself into their bedroom to start packing. “Shouldn’t take me long.”</p>
<p>Maybe all hope isn’t lost just yet. Maybe they can make whatever this is work.</p><hr/>
<p>Logan sits in silence on the couch, surveying the room before him. This place, their home, is so small. Did he spend his entire family fortune already? Is it saved up in some nest egg somewhere for when they have kids? Do they want kids? He’s picked up that they have a dog, a large one, but he’s not sure about the rest.</p>
<p>He spots a mantle lined with photographs and pushes himself to his feet to go inspect it. Maybe one of the pictures will trigger something. Maybe if he could just find some answers, he would actually listen to his doctor’s orders about bed rest. He must still be stubborn as hell since Veronica doesn’t seem to be fighting it much.</p>
<p>He stretches one arm out to the wall to support himself while he looks at the array of photos. There’s an old one of her and a man he recognizes to be her dad. There’s one of him and Dick in wetsuits standing next to their surfboards that he thinks might actually be recent. There’s one of him and Veronica crouched down outside of their condo with that giant dog of theirs. There are a bunch of artsy beach shots and classic Neptune photography and then he remembers that photography has always been one of her hobbies. She must have taken these. She’s good.</p>
<p>And then he gets to a cluster of photos that are just the two them. They look young in the first one, taken during the years of high school he doesn’t remember maybe? Or college? He’s sitting behind her in the grass somewhere, his arms wrapped around her waist and they’re both grinning at the camera. They look more like the people he remembers them being, but her hair is long, and they both look so damn happy. He can’t remember ever making her that happy.</p>
<p>They’re older in the next one. He’s wearing a white Navy uniform and she’s in a long black dress. Some type of Naval Ball or something perhaps? Those were a thing, right? It looks like a cheesy prom photo and he thinks that’s probably why they kept it. He’s starting to understand them and their relationship already.</p>
<p>They’re at the beach in the next one and he’s carrying her on his back. She looks like she’s cheering about something and he’s looking over his shoulder at her and grinning. He can see it in his own eyes. He loves her. Why can’t he remember?</p>
<p>The next one catches his breath in his throat. It’s a close up shot of the two of them. Their foreheads are pressed together and he has a strand of her hair curled around his index finger. It reminds him of an engagement photo. Did they even take those? But it’s the way they’re looking at each other that really gets to him. She’s looking at him in that way she used to look at Duncan, only there’s something different about it. Like she’s happier or more in love.</p>
<p>All of this was real. Veronica was his. And he still doesn’t feel any of it.</p>
<p>“Find something you like?”</p>
<p>He turns and finds her standing near the couch, towing a couple of bags of luggage with her.</p>
<p>“Is this an engagement photo?” he asks, holding it up for her to see.</p>
<p>She gives him another watery laugh as though it’s both painful and hilarious that he can’t remember anything. “We were engaged for like two days if that before we got married.”</p>
<p>“Were you pregnant? Are you pregnant?” He doesn’t actually know how long they’ve been married.</p>
<p>She shakes her head. “You wanted to get married for a long time and I kept telling you no because I was afraid to turn into nearly every married couple I know. Hating each other, cheating on each other, divorced. P.I. problems, am I right?” She clears her throat. “I was more afraid of losing you though. I know I’m your home, Logan, that I’m your family. Or I was before…all of this. But I wanted to make us official. I wanted to see how happy I could make you as your wife. And since I’d turned you down so many times before, we had a nice small courthouse wedding nearly right after I said yes. The bomb went off a couple of hours after our wedding while we were packing to go on our honeymoon.”</p>
<p>He feels his jaw drop open. “Oh my god.”</p>
<p>“I don’t actually know what’s it like to be your wife yet, but it’s fun to say.”</p>
<p>Logan looks back down at the picture in his hands. “So, what is this from?”</p>
<p>“Wallace and Shae’s wedding. Their wedding photographer captured it. Do you remember Wallace?”</p>
<p>He racks his brain. “He’s that new kid you started hanging out with, right?”</p>
<p>Another half sob, half laugh. “Yeah. He was my best friend for a while.”</p>
<p>“Was? What happened to him?”</p>
<p>“He and I are still very close, but I’d say you replaced him for that title.”</p>
<p>He shakes his head. “Why can’t I remember any of this?”</p>
<p>“I wish I knew.”</p>
<p>He limps back over to the couch and she hesitates but sits down next to him.</p>
<p>“So uh, Dick told me we started dating in high school.”</p>
<p>She nods.</p>
<p>“Did uh – did I take your virginity?”</p>
<p>She covers her mouth with her hand when she laughs this time. “No, Duncan did. I think. Might have been Beaver. Never really figured that out.”</p>
<p>He stares at her, confused. “I’m sorry, what? Beaver? You two were a thing?”</p>
<p>“Umm,” she starts, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose. “You know how I said I’ve been through worse?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” he says slowly, not entirely following.</p>
<p>“You’re gonna make me say it?”</p>
<p>“Veronica, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”</p>
<p>She sinks back against the couch and crosses her arms over her chest. It’s an old tell of hers, that much he knows, she takes this pose to try and protect herself.</p>
<p>“Do you remember Shelly’s party sophomore year?”<br/>
<br/>
“Yeah I think so.”</p>
<p>“Look, I don’t want to get into all of the details of that night, but I was drugged. And someone had slipped Duncan some ecstasy and we had sex and neither of us remember much from it. But Beaver also raped me that night. And I don’t know what happened first.”</p>
<p>It’s as though he can feel the color drain from his face. “I gave Duncan the E.”</p>
<p>She winces. “Yeah, you did. I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that. Don’t worry about it, L. What happened with Beaver wasn’t your fault.”</p>
<p>“Duncan was trying to take you home and I stopped him. He would have gotten you out of there.”</p>
<p>She reaches over like she’s about to cup his face but then must think better of it and her hands clench into fists and fall back to her sides.</p>
<p>“That was 16 years ago, Logan. I know you’re just hearing it for the first time but trust me when I say that we’ve been over this. I’ve never blamed you. In fact, you’re the only person who knows, the only person I’ve ever told.”</p>
<p>“What happened to Beaver?”</p>
<p>She looks up at the ceiling. “Ah fuck um, this is a lot to throw at you at once, but he jumped off the roof of The Grand.”</p>
<p>“Shit,” he curses, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Anyone else in my life commit suicide you want to tell me about?”</p>
<p>She shakes her head, fidgeting with the rings on her left hand.</p>
<p>“What else did I forget?” he asks, his head still spinning with everything she’s told him in the last ten minutes.</p>
<p>“A lot.”</p>
<p>He huffs. “Just know, this is where I would get up and pace if my bad leg would allow it.”</p>
<p>“Noted.”</p>
<p>In the past 15 years, his mother and best friend’s little brother took their own lives. The truth came out that his father murdered Lilly Kane and then someone murdered him for it. His father tried to set Veronica on fire and his best friend’s little brother raped her. He’d started dating her in high school, they broke up and got back together a bunch of times, and somehow made it stick after he joined the Navy. She was reluctant to marry him, to marry anyone at all it seemed, but she loved him too much that her heart won out over of her head. And according to reports from both her and Dick, they were each other’s best friend.</p>
<p>He has a feeling that wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<p>He needs to think about something else, talk about something else. What can he bring up that won’t end with someone else being dead?</p>
<p>“So, you and I –” he doesn’t know how to ask this. But he keeps thinking about Dick’s comments that she’s loud in bed and how she must be a quote unquote freak in the sheets.</p>
<p>“You and I what?”</p>
<p>“I just – blame it on the 17-year-old boy living in my head somewhere coupled with some idea Dick planted in my head, but…our sex life?”</p>
<p>She starts laughing so hard she starts coughing. “What about it? What the hell did Dick say to you? I should have known better than to leave him alone with you in your current condition.”</p>
<p>“He uh – he said that you were loud and um used the phrase freak in the sheets once or twice.”</p>
<p>She buries her face in her hands and he thinks she almost looks mortified.</p>
<p>“For the record,” she starts slowly. “I <em>am </em>loud. You’ve told me on more than one occasion that I swear like a sailor. And I don’t know what Dick thinks he knows about our sex life, but we’ve had sex on the majority of the surfaces in this house. And missionary isn’t our go to.”</p>
<p>He thinks he may actually be blushing. “Wow – I okay.”</p>
<p>“You asked,” she shrugs.</p>
<p>“So, uh – we’re good at it then?”</p>
<p>Veronica smiles. “We’ve been using it as a way to avoid our problems and not talk about things that are bothering us since college. Sometimes I think we’re too good at it.”</p>
<p>He looks over at her. “What you said back at the hospital, about us using how much we loved each other to hurt one another? What did you mean by that?”</p>
<p>She fidgets with her engagement ring and wedding band again, twisting them around and around on her ring finger. “You know how cruel we can be to each other. And that was before we really <em>knew</em> each other. So, when we would get in fights, we knew how to make it hurt. We knew who to date or hook up with when we broke up to piss the other person off. We were – I don’t know, savage I guess, when we weren’t together. Like it was that hard for us to be apart.”</p>
<p>“How’d we end the war?”</p>
<p>“Like I said, we grew up. Spent nine years apart.”</p>
<p>“Okay, I feel like I’m still missing some pieces here. Veronica, tell me our story. From the beginning in order.”</p>
<p>Her smile is soft and her eyes are watery again. “How much time you got?”</p>
<p>“Couple weeks at least.”</p>
<p>She laughs and he’s starting to find that he really likes that sound. And then she starts to tell him their story. How he’d come to her asking for her help in his thinking that his mother was still alive. How she’d kissed him outside that seedy Camelot motel after he’d followed her there to try and protect her. How he’d kissed her back and made her world spin. The sneaking around. Everybody finding out at that surprise party. The video camera in his pool house. Her false accusations of rape and murder that she both felt awful for afterward by the way. The gang war he’d accidentally started and their first summer together.</p>
<p>How he’d told her that her loved her in the back of his Xterra and then someone broke the back windshield on his car with them still inside. How she left and went back to Duncan and how they spent senior year trying to hurt each other out of spite. And then he gave her some drunk speech about being epic, but it must have really meant something to her because she gets this faraway look in her eyes when she talks about it. And Beaver, oh Beaver. That kid was more troubled than he thought. But she thought her father was dead, the only family she had left really, and he’d been willing to be her support system, her new family. He was trying to take care of her when Keith came home.</p>
<p>But they’d spent another summer together and really fell in love this time. And things were great until she got in over her head with a rapist case she was tracking at Hearst. He got too afraid for her, she stopped telling him everything she was doing to investigate, he hired a bodyguard for her but didn’t tell her and she thought she was being stalked. And then he broke up with her and apparently slept with <em>Madison Sinclair</em>, honestly what the fuck? And her finding out about <em>that</em> turned their most recent reunion into a very brief one. She’d finished undergrad at Stanford and then moved to New York to go to law school. Their nine years apart.</p>
<p>She came back to Neptune because he’d asked her to. Needed her help to clear his name of murder charges. And not for the first time apparently, what kind of people does he hang out with? But they’d fallen for each other all over again, history be damned. She stayed here and waited for him for 180 days while he was deployed. And she kept waiting for him, deployment after deployment. When he came home, they became this inseparable, disgustingly in love couple as Dick had described it. They were finally talking about things even if they still used sex from time to time to avoid the hard stuff.</p>
<p>And now they’re married. He has a wife. Veronica Mars is his wife.</p>
<p>“So, that’s that,” she finishes, wiping at her eyes. “Do you remember any of that? Anything seem familiar?”</p>
<p>This hurts and he doesn’t even know why because it’s not like he feels anything – oh that’s why it hurts. All of that and nothing. A wonderful story, but that’s all it is to him. A story.</p>
<p>“Veronica, I believe you. I believe everything you’re saying is real, that it happened. But I just don’t feel it. I don’t love you like your Logan does. I don’t know how to get him back for you.”</p>
<p>Fuck, she’s <em>really </em>crying now. He doesn’t know how to help her. He doesn’t know how to make this right.</p>
<p>“My Logan died in that bomb, didn’t he?” she asks quietly. “He’s not coming home.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t know how to answer that. He’s here and he’s very much alive, but he’s not the person she wants him to be. And there’s no way to tell if he ever will be again.</p>
<p>“Look I – I can tell by those pictures and from the stories you and Dick have both told me, that he – that I – loved you very much. And I can’t imagine what it must be like to have something like that and then lose it. Because what I remember about loving Lilly…it felt really one-sided sometimes. But what you and I had wasn’t like that, I don’t think. I want to remember for you, Veronica, I do. But nothing’s there.”</p>
<p>“I get it,” she says still twisting her rings. Her voice breaks when she speaks and he hates that he’s doing this to her. All of the bad blood between them in his most recent memory, doesn’t erase the fact that they were friends once. They’d been cruel to each other sure, but he never had any intention to hurt her <em>like this</em>.</p>
<p>“It took us 15 years to get where we are today, I don’t expect you to get there in a week,” Veronica continues. “Do you think you could get there again someday though? Not with our old memories, but with new ones?”</p>
<p>“Can you get me to fall in love with you again, is that what you’re asking?”</p>
<p>She sniffles and nods.</p>
<p>“I don’t know, Ronnie – er Veronica. My life’s just been turned upside down, I have to figure out who I am again. And I know you could probably help me with that, but I think I have to figure out somethings for myself first.”</p>
<p>She nods again, tugging some of the luggage she brought with her his way. “If you’d rather stay with Dick, I’d understand. You don’t have to stay with me just because I said I was your home. You need to figure out what that means for you again. I don’t want to force something that isn’t there.”</p>
<p>He takes the bags from her. “You’re incredible you know that?”</p>
<p>“No,” she shakes her head. “I’m really not.”</p>
<p>“You are,” Logan insists. “Veronica, I promise you, if anything comes back to me, anything at all, I will fight like hell to get you your husband back.”</p>
<p>“That’s why you’re the one who’s incredible, Logan. 17-year-old you doesn’t even like me, but you’re willing to do anything in your power to make me feel better.”</p>
<p>“It’s not just that. This is for me too. I want to feel what the people in those photos feel. But I think I just need to step away from it all and think for a bit. Please don’t hate me.”</p>
<p>She gives him a small half smile. “I could never hate you. Not even during the years when I was trying so hard to.”</p>
<p>He rests a hand on her knee, hears her sharp intake of breath in response to the contact. “I’ll call you in a couple of days, okay? Once I figure some stuff out.”</p>
<p>“Don’t rush it on my behalf.”</p>
<p>“I’ll do my best. At this point, that’s all I can do.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>You guys are the most supportive fandom, thank you all so much! I was going to wait a couple days to post the conclusion, but I changed my mind. I'm sorry the story as a whole is so short, but hopefully with the way I've told it the length makes sense to you all.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When he gets deployed, at least she knows that he’s coming back. Barring the worst-case scenario that is, she knows he’s coming back. That’s the reassurance she needs to sleep at night. 30 more days, two more weeks, one last sleep, and he’ll be home. Stretched out along the bed beside her, one arm flung over her torso possessively, the rise and fall of his chest at her back.</p>
<p>She doesn’t have that reassurance now. She doesn’t even know <em>what </em>she has now. A boy – a man – who wants to remember her but doesn’t know how. A two-week-old marriage with a husband who’s forgotten how to love her. A cold spot on the bed that’s usually warmed with his body heat.</p>
<p>She shivers and pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Maybe her dad has the A/C turned up too high, but she’s freezing. And all she wants to do is curl into Logan’s side and press her cold nose against his neck and laugh when he accuses her of taking ‘ice queen’ too seriously.</p>
<p>Speaking of her dad, she notices him hovering in the doorway to the guest room, trying to keep Pony from bounding in and jumping onto the bed. But she calls for her and she escapes Keith’s grip on her collar. She happily shimmies toward Veronica, her tail wagging as Veronica buries her face in the dog’s fur.</p>
<p>“Really?” Keith asks. “You let her onto the bed with you?”</p>
<p>“Only when Logan’s gone,” she says softly, letting Pony lick her face.</p>
<p>That deflates him and he moves to sit on the edge of the bed. “Honey, I wish there was something I could do.”</p>
<p>“Invent time travel. Let me figure out the clue sooner or at least keep Logan in the house for 60 more seconds.”</p>
<p>“Don’t beat yourself up over this, okay? None of us figured it out.”</p>
<p>“But it was meant <em>for me</em>,” she says moving her legs out of the way before Pony curls up on top of them and makes them fall asleep.</p>
<p>“So what? <em>You</em> should be one who lost the last 15 years of your life?”</p>
<p>“Better me than him.” She leans back against the headboard and stares up at the ceiling. “There’s plenty I’d like to forget.”</p>
<p>But then she thinks about Logan being the one in her shoes. Her not remembering him past the day he smashed her headlights. She takes it back; she wouldn’t wish this pain on him. Better him than her.</p>
<p>“Did I ever believe in fairytales?” Veronica asks, absentmindedly scratching Pony’s head.</p>
<p>Keith laughs. “You were a little girl once you know. There was a time in your life when pink was your favorite color.”</p>
<p>“I shudder to think about it.”</p>
<p>He laughs again. “You used to love Sleeping Beauty. I don’t know what it was about it, but you were constantly begging to watch it.”</p>
<p>“One magical kiss wakes the sleeping princess, huh? Think that stuff works in real life?”</p>
<p>“You could always try and find out.”</p>
<p>She sighs. “I don’t even know how I got him to fall for me in the first place. I definitely don’t know how to do it again.”</p>
<p>“You’re still you, Veronica. You’re both still the same people. What he loves about you hasn’t changed.”</p>
<p>“He doesn’t remember what he loves about me. I’d love to believe one magical kiss could fix all of that but –”</p>
<p>Keith sighs, reaching over to scratch Pony’s belly. “Don’t give up on him, honey. He wouldn’t give up on you.”</p>
<p>“I know,” she nods. “But I just want him to be happy. If I don’t do that for him anymore? I don’t want to trap him into anything. I’ll sign divorce papers if he asks me to.”</p>
<p>“We’re not there yet.”</p>
<p>“Yet,” she echoes, leaning back against the headboard again and closing her eyes.</p>
<p>“Honey –”</p>
<p>“I know, Dad. He’s not the only one who needs some time with all of this. I just wish I could go back and protect him. He’s been through enough in his life, we both have.”</p>
<p>“I wish I had the right thing to say to help you.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, me too.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>He’s more than a little confused when Dick tells him Veronica’s friend Wallace is here to see him. He barely knows the guy. But maybe Logan 2.0 and him were friends. He’s obviously not sure of anything at this point.</p>
<p>“Hey man, how are you holding up?” Wallace asks, walking into Dick’s living room behind him.</p>
<p>“Still a little sore, still a lot confused,” Logan answers truthfully.</p>
<p>Wallace nods, fidgeting with something that looks like a DVD case between his hands. “That’s understandable. Look, I won’t keep you long, I just wanted to bring you this. Thought it might help.”</p>
<p>He passes Logan the DVD. <em>Pirates Class of ’06 </em>is scribbled on the front in Sharpie.</p>
<p>“What is this?” Logan asks.</p>
<p>“I work at our high school now,” Wallace explains. “This was in our senior year time capsule. A couple of kids from Pan High thought it would be a fun prank to dig a bunch of holes on our school grounds and ended up unearthing a bunch of these from over the years.”</p>
<p>“So what, it’s an endearing video montage?” Logan asks.</p>
<p>“Dude, is that the video Clemmons insisted everyone get interviewed for?” Dick asks. “Where they asked us all to explain what was the most important to us in the year 2006 like it was supposed to blow future generations’ minds or something?”</p>
<p>Wallace nods. “Yeah. I thought maybe hearing it from your younger self would help.”<br/><br/>“Hearing what?” Logan asks.</p>
<p>“Just watch it,” Wallace tells him. “You can decide what to do with it after that.”</p>
<p>Her friend leaves and Dick takes the DVD from him and pops it into his DVD player. “I bet I had a really awesome answer to this.”</p>
<p>He hits play and Shelly Pomeroy’s face fills the screen to welcome them to this video. Logan grabs the remote from Dick and hits fast forward, trying to get to the important part that Wallace had insisted he watch. Dick complains when he fast forwards over his response and Logan grumbles that he can watch it later. He stops when he sees his own face.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Go ahead, Mr. Echolls, whenever you’re ready.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“What, you want me to talk about how great life is right now? Like some teenagers years from now will actually find any of this interesting?”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Talk about whatever you like. Your dreams for the future, something you want to tell your older self, or even just your favorite TV show.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“And who’s going to hear this?”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Maybe no one. Maybe some kids ten years from now. It’s hard to say.”</em>
</p>
<p>His younger self is quiet for a moment, as though he’s trying to gauge what he wants to say. His gaze focuses on the ground for a bit before he looks back up at the camera.</p>
<p>
  <em>“How’s life in 2006 you ask? You know, honestly, it’s not that great.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Why’s that?”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Well you see, there’s this girl. That’s always the case, isn’t it? Guys are always falling for girls way out of their leagues. But I had her for a while. She was mine and it was perfect. But I messed things up because that’s what I do. And I lost her. I even drunkenly told her on prom night how much she means to me. I thought I’d scared her off, but she showed up to my place the next day. But like I said, I screw things up and there was already another girl there with me. You want me to give my future self some advice? Well, all right, here it is. If you’re ever lucky enough to get Veronica Mars back, don’t let her go. She challenges you in all the right ways. She’s not afraid to go toe-to-toe with you. And to top it all off, she’s a damn good kisser. If any future guys are out there watching this, know that it is possible to fall in love in high school and that you should fight like hell not to lose them.”</em>
</p>
<p>Logan hits pause on the video and looks over at Dick. His friend shrugs.</p>
<p>“I told you, she’s had you whipped since high school.”</p>
<p>He turns back to the video without responding, fast forwarding until he sees her. He has to know what she had to say.</p>
<p>
  <em>“I don’t know what you want me to say. This year’s been really hard, I don’t want to remember most of it.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Do you have any advice for your future self? Something you’ve learned from this year?”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“I guess – maybe that loving someone isn’t always enough.”</em>
</p>
<p>That’s all her clip is, and he doesn’t know what it means. But if he pieces it together with his own clip, he knows that he fucked up somehow. He thinks about what she told him a couple of days ago about how they used their feelings for each other to hurt one another. What had they done to each other this time?</p>
<p>“Was she talking about me, do you think?” Logan asks.</p>
<p>“Probably.”</p>
<p>He sighs. “So, I was trying to warn my future self not to lose her, huh? And I had her, married her even, but lost her anyway due to something completely out of my control.”</p>
<p>“If you want her back, I don’t think she’ll fight you on it.”</p>
<p>“It’s not that simple.”</p>
<p>“Dude, you’ve been moping around here for days. I get that you’re trying to figure things out, and you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, but if you want to fix this, you have to go talk to her. You’re not going to remember anything like this.”</p>
<p>“I took this step back from her, because I wanted to figure out who I was, who I’ve become, on my own. But all I can do is think about her and how sad I’ve made her.”</p>
<p>“You still love her,” Dick nods. “You don’t realize it, but you do.”</p>
<p>“And what am I supposed to do with that?”</p>
<p>Dick whistles. “You must be desperate if you’re asking <em>me</em> for love advice.”</p>
<p>“I <em>am </em>desperate.”</p>
<p>“All right, okay,” Dick starts, looking around for both something to write with and write on. He finds a pen and starts writing something down on the back of an old takeout menu. “Tell her to meet you here.”</p>
<p>“And where is ‘here’ exactly?” Logan asks, eyeing the location he’s written down on the menu.</p>
<p>“Some beach spot you two have always had a hard on for.”</p>
<p>“Isn’t that giving her false hope? Like making her think I actually remembered something that was important to us once?”</p>
<p>“So then, tell her I suggested it. But just go talk to her. Teenage you was fun and all, but I’d kind of like my grown up friend back.”</p>
<p>Logan reads over the location again and for the briefest of seconds, he can hear the sound of her laughter in the back of his mind.</p>
<hr/>
<p>She’s not sure what to expect from this. Dick wanted Logan to meet up with her here. At their little secluded beach seemingly away from the world where they spent several summers falling for each other. Since when was Dick Casablancas a sentimental sap?</p>
<p>Veronica’s sitting on a beach towel she’s spread out across the sand, listening to the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, when she hears the shuffling of footsteps behind her. He’s not limping as badly as he was a few days ago, but she can tell he’s still in pain by the way he struggles to join her on the towel. She moves to help him and is greeted with a small smile of thanks and appreciation.</p>
<p>“What makes this place so special?” Logan asks, staring out at the ocean. “Dick wouldn’t elaborate much.”</p>
<p>“The first two times we dated,” she starts. “The summer between junior year and senior year and the summer after we graduated high school, we would come here a lot. You always said you did your best thinking at the beach. And you had a spot that you liked to go to, to be alone, but you wanted a place that was ours. You found this place somehow. Dick knows about it, because he used to come collect you back during that first summer when you were basically at war with the PCHers.”</p>
<p>“Why did I think we needed our own thinking spot?”</p>
<p>She curls her hand into the sand and lets the grains slip out through her fingers. “What’s your favorite place in the world? In the memories that you have, what is it?”</p>
<p>“Any beach really,” he answers with a sigh. “Where I got to be alone and away from my shit family. Where I could surf. Where I could sit alone with my thoughts and the ocean and just…dream about another life without all of the pain.”</p>
<p>She nods. “You were trying to give me a place where I could escape like that. A place where we could do it together. We’d both been through a lot of trauma, we were just trying to get through it. You told me you loved me for the first time in the backseat of your Xterra. But the first time I said it, we were out here.”</p>
<p>“You meant the world to him, didn’t you? Your Logan.”</p>
<p>She nods again, wiping at the tears that are starting to gather in the corner of her eyes. “It took me longer to get there, but he meant the world to me too.”</p>
<p>“I thought that distancing myself from you would help me figure stuff out, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. That life I used to dream about, finding a home that actually felt like one, finding somebody who loved me for me and not for my money or for who my parents were…I’m understanding now that I had that with you. And I’ve been going about this all wrong.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?”</p>
<p>“You are not 17-year-old Veronica. And I’m not 17-year-old Logan. I don’t remember anything past fall of 2004, but somewhere in those missing 15 years we both grew up and learned to depend on each other. I don’t know if I’ll ever get those memories back and you may have to keep rehashing all of our deepest, darkest secrets and reminding me not to call you by nicknames you don’t like, but I would like to try. I fell in love with you once, I can do it again.”</p>
<p>She closes her eyes. He wants to love her. He’s choosing her anyway even though he definitely doesn’t have to.</p>
<p>“So, how do you want to do this?” she asks. “Do you want to start dating again? Or do you just want to move back in together? We’d have to move, obviously, but you can come stay with my dad and I until we find a place if you like.”</p>
<p>He starts laughing. “Dating you again means ordering one tiramisu and you basically eating all of it. At least by now you’ve given up on any pretenses and let me order two.”</p>
<p>She freezes. She feels her heart rate speed up and her mouth go dry.</p>
<p>“How do you know that?”</p>
<p>He looks over at her, a look of confusion passing over his features. “I have no idea. Dick had this take out menu.”</p>
<p>He pulls an old, folded paper menu from Mama Leone’s out of his pocket.</p>
<p>“This was our favorite restaurant,” she says, taking the menu from him.</p>
<p>“Yeah, you always ordered the manicotti. It’s a shame, they closed. Where am I supposed to take you on a date now?”</p>
<p>“Logan,” she breathes. “You’re doing it again.”</p>
<p>Who needs magical fairytale kisses when you have an old takeout menu from a closed down Italian restaurant?</p>
<p>“I don’t –” he starts. “I don’t think I remember anything else. Just that.”</p>
<p>“Okay um, focus on this place, this beach. Anything coming back to you from being here?”</p>
<p>He looks around and then back over at her. “No, I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>“What if – what about –” It’s a long shot, but she has to try it. “Does the word bobcat mean anything to you?”</p>
<p>The way he’s looking at her, she thinks it might have triggered some sort of memory for him, but then he’s shaking his head.</p>
<p>“No, sorry. Should it?”</p>
<p>She sighs. “It’s your nickname for me.”</p>
<p>“Bobcat? Seriously? Why’s that?”</p>
<p>Veronica looks down at her hands and picks at the cuticle on her thumb. “It’s a sex thing.”</p>
<p>“So, you <em>are</em> a freak in the sheets.”</p>
<p>She huffs and smacks him in the chest while he laughs. And for one moment, everything feels normal again. But it fades quickly. Remembering two of her favorite foods doesn’t even begin to encompass 15 years-worth of memories.</p>
<p>“Do you feel up to helping me pack up our life at the condo? Maybe you’ll pick up a spoon and remember my favorite flavor of ice cream.”</p>
<p>Logan nods. “Rocky Road.”</p>
<p>Her eyes widen. “Why is food the only thing you can remember about me? Do I eat <em>that</em> much?”</p>
<p>“Veronica, Rocky Road has been your favorite flavor of ice cream for as long as I’ve known you. I may have lost the last 15 years, but I didn’t lose the first six we’ve had together.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” she says, shaking her head in embarrassment. “Right.”</p>
<p>“But I’ll come with you.”</p>
<p>She looks back over at him, meeting his gaze.</p>
<p>“I want to see what else from our life I can get back. It’s in there somewhere. We just have to coax it out.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>He watches her from their bed. The bedroom windows were shattered from the explosion and she gingerly steps around the broken glass trying to put things in boxes. He doesn’t know what it is, but he’s mesmerized by her. There’s just something about the way she moves, it’s like he can almost remember.</p>
<p>“All right, start handing me stuff, see if it brings anything back,” he tells her.</p>
<p>She raises an eyebrow at him and tosses the flip-flops she has in her hands at him.</p>
<p>Logan laughs, ducking out of the way. “I was thinking of something more specific.”</p>
<p>“I thought you said you would help. Not sit there and watch me.”</p>
<p>“But I don’t know where anything is.”</p>
<p>Veronica points toward the dresser. “The top drawer is yours. You can start there.”</p>
<p>He smirks and scoots off the bed, being careful to avoid the shards of glass. The drawer has nothing in it but socks and underwear. It tells him even less than her pair of flip-flops. But then he spots a bottle of perfume sitting on top of the dresser. He reaches for it, reading the label before spritzing it into the air.</p>
<p>It smells like her. He’s been wrapped up in it dozens, hundreds of times. It mingles with that marshmallow scented shampoo of hers and settles into his clothes until he finds himself wandering around the grocery store wondering if she followed him there because he can’t get the smell out of his nostrils.</p>
<p>“What is it?” she asks, pausing with a pair of stilettos in her hands.</p>
<p>He’s asked her to wear those in bed before. Some odd fantasy or another they both found to be really hot.</p>
<p>“It’s happening,” he exhales, rubbing a hand over his head.</p>
<p>“What is?”</p>
<p>“It’s coming back. In pieces. Your perfume. Those heels.”</p>
<p>She drops them into her box of shoes and steps closer to him. “What else?”</p>
<p>He looks around the bedroom. Their bedroom.</p>
<p>“You keep an extra taser in the nightstand. For what reason, I don’t know, but it makes you feel safe, so I don’t question it.”</p>
<p>“Logan.”</p>
<p>Her voice is soft and choked with tears. He’s coming back to her, slowly but surely, she’s getting him back.</p>
<p>“Humor me for a second, will you?” she asks, quietly.</p>
<p>“Sure, what’s up?”</p>
<p>“Kiss me?”</p>
<p>He takes a step closer to her, reaching out and tucking her hair behind her ear. “You hoping my body will remember yours?”</p>
<p>She shrugs, her cheek pressing into his hand. “It works in the movies. Isn’t it about time we actually get our happy ending?”</p>
<p>He smiles, moving to cup her face with both of his hands. “I’ll try anything.”</p>
<p>Logan bends his head and their lips meet. He knows exactly what to do, exactly how to hold her, exactly what she likes. He kisses her and he remembers the first time he held her like this outside a motel room at the Camelot. His fingers slide into her hair and he remembers telling her he liked her hair long so he had more to pull on. His thumb brushes against that sensitive spot on her neck they both love and he remembers her 30-year-old self trying to explain away a hickey he left there to her father. As he kisses her, their wedding day comes back to him. His wife, Veronica.</p>
<p>She pulls away first, but he thinks she already knows. She felt it in the way he was kissing her, the way <em>her Logan</em> knows how to do. Veronica opens and closes her mouth a couple of times as her eyes fill with tears, but she can’t find the words and ends up covering her mouth with both of her hands.</p>
<p>“I remember,” he says slowly. “Things are still a little fuzzy, especially the older stuff, but you – I remember you. The you that I married. And well okay, still the one who planted a bong in my locker junior year thanks again for that.”</p>
<p>“You –” her chest is heaving like she’s trying to fight off a round of hiccupping sobs. “How did I get this scar?”</p>
<p>She points to the inside of her left wrist, where a thin crescent-moon shaped scar is nestled off to the right of her veins.</p>
<p>“Three years ago. You were chasing a suspect and tripped when he led you into an alley. You cut it on something but couldn’t identify what. You said the tetanus booster shot hurt worse than the cut itself.”</p>
<p>Her eyes slip closed and a fat tear rolls down her cheek. He wants to go to her, hold her, tell her everything is going to be okay. But he waits, because he knows what’s coming. One final question. One final echo and response that has somehow stuck with them for all these years despite its drunken origin and its less than romantic meaning.</p>
<p>“Spanning years and continents?” she asks softly, opening her eyes to look at him again.</p>
<p>There it is. He doesn’t know why they stuck, why they resonated, but these seven words – they belong to them. It’s the weirdest inside joke that almost sounds like their own twisted version of vows sometimes. But it’s something that’s always been solely theirs. Something they’ve tried to explain and have never been able to. The two of them understand though, and that’s enough for him.</p>
<p>“Lives ruined. Bloodshed,” he answers.</p>
<p>“Logan,” she breathes.</p>
<p>And that’s when she breaks. Veronica collapses against his chest, her arms twisting around him so tight that he thinks if she wasn’t so small, he’d have trouble breathing. He wraps her up in his arms and inhales the marshmallow-scent of her shampoo.  </p>
<p>“Yeah baby, I’m your Logan.”</p>
<p>Her hands ball into fists at his back, trapping the fabric of his shirt. He welcomes the way she clings to him. He never wants to be without her again, never wants to disappear from her life. He remembers being a teenager and thinking that it wasn’t possible to love her more than he already did. But somewhere along the way in those 15 years it happened.</p>
<p>And now she’s his wife.</p>
<p>“Veronica?”</p>
<p>She hums in response.</p>
<p>“Do you have my ring?”</p>
<p>She pulls back from him slightly and slips his wedding band out of the back pocket of her jeans. She takes his left hand and slides the ring back into place before curling back against his chest.</p>
<p>“Have you just been carrying that around, waiting for me to remember?” he asks softly.</p>
<p>He feels her nod against him. “I was just trying to keep you close to me.”</p>
<p>He’s seen the pain she’s been in these past few weeks, but he hasn’t really registered the gravity of her pain until now. Not until he remembered her fully. He knows what he means to her and he hates that she was forced to think she’d lost that forever.</p>
<p>“I’m here,” Logan whispers. “And I’m not leaving.”</p>
<p>“You came back to me,” she says, stretching up to place a kiss to his jawline.</p>
<p>“I’ll always come back to you,” he tells her, smoothing a hand down the back of her hair. “It’s gonna take more than a little temporary amnesia to keep us apart.”</p>
<p>“Don’t put it out into the universe, babe. I just want us to get our happily ever after.”</p>
<p>“Magic fairytale kisses and all?”</p>
<p>She smirks up at him and then curls back down against his chest. “Yeah, something like that.”</p>
<p>Logan decides that today marks the first <em>real </em>day of their marriage. And he fully intends to give her, Veronica, <em>his wife</em>, that happy ending the two of them have always deserved.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>